Ashland's Cadilac Paint demolition begins

Wednesday

ASHLAND – To great neighborhood relief, a backhoe on Wednesday morning took down the first of several outbuildings at the defunct Cadilac Paint and Varnish Co. property.

“The whole neighborhood’s been fighting it for over 20 years,” resident Ed Hart said, after watching the big machine push around debris. “It’s nice to see it finally go.”

Hart, who lives nearby, said he and several other residents have been pushing to revitalize the property for decades.

"I lived on Cedar Street about a mile away," Hart said, of where he lived when the company was still functioning, "and on a hot day you could smell lacquer fumes."

The crumpled shed represented the first step in demolition and clean-up of the once-abandoned property, expected to take about six weeks. Residents voted at the November Special Town Meeting to take the property at no cost and spend $285,000 on cleaning it up.

“It’s great to see this really tangible step,” state Rep. Jack Lewis said. “Nothing is quite as tangible as watching the buildings being knocked down.”

Standing outside the largest of the buildings, a green behemoth marked by graffiti, Lewis said he hasn’t been hearing complaints about the site, necessarily, he said.

“I’ve been hearing more of people dreaming about what it could be.”

The envisioned park will be one of the only recreational spaces on that side of town, said Hart.

“This has always been a neighborhood separate in a lot of ways, because of (Rte.) 126,” Selectman Steven Mitchell said.

A park will help connect it with the rest of town, he said.

Officials aren’t worried about contamination from the former paint and varnish company. Underground storage tanks and buried drums were removed from the property in the mid-1980s. A few years ago, Hart remembered, the soil around the buildings was replaced.

“There’s been dozens and dozens of environmental (tests) and everything they’ve been able to find has been remediated,” Hart said. “This place has been completely cleaned.”

Alison Bosma can be reached at 508-626-3957 or abosma@wickedlocal.com. Find her on Twitter at @AlisonBosma.